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Morbid Fact Du Jour For February 9, 2017

Today’s Bankrobbing Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Today we begin a two-part series on the Suburban Bonnie and Clyde – bankrobbers from 1990’s Chicagoland.

In 1991 the the Chicago banking community was under siege. An unprecedented ninety-two stickups had occurred in the six-county metro area during the preceding twelve months, setting new standards, while the FBI and various suburban task forces doggedly pressed on.

Married couple Jeffrey and Jill Erickson were responsible for at least eight of these daring daylight bank heists beginning in January 1990 and continuing right up until the fateful moment on December 16, 1991, when Jeffrey was nabbed by FBI agents.

Erickson was seated in a stolen Mazda in a shopping plaza where Wise Road and Irving Park intersect at the south end of Schaumburg, that vast, unchecked suburban “mall sprawl” northwest of O’Hare Airport. The Erickson’s two-year crime spree, which would end in murder and suicide, brought to mind similar exploits of the famous southwestern “Dustbowl” desperadoes, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow.

Jeff Erickson, an “all-American” boy from Morton Grove, Illinois, was an ex-marine who had served briefly as an auxiliary police officer in suburban Rosemont and Hoffman Estates from 1985 until 1987. Erickson was a uniform-and-gun nut, obsessed with motorcycles and firepower, but his departmental evaluations on his last job were substandard, forcing his resignation.

One shudders to think just how many other psychopaths with gun fetishes manage to slip through the testing safeguards and wind up out on the street in uniform. [I think we’re beginning to know! – DeSpair]

And yet, while it seemed completely out of character for this type of individual to open a used book store and capably represent himself before a cerebral clientele of bibliophiles and Book-of-the-Month aficionados, Erickson was warmly regarded by his customers as well versed in the classics and possessing a superior mind.

Erickson closed his store on Mondays – setting aside that one day of the week to rob banks. He disguised himself with a phony beard, drove stolen Japanese imports, carried an assault rifle into the poorly guarded suburban banks, and threatened to kill everyone in sight who failed to cooperate. His adoring wife, Jill, whom he affectionately referred to as “Gorgeous,” drove the backup getaway car.

The Suburban Bonnie and Clyde

The two of them were believed to have forged a “death pact.” They would not be taken alive to face the sting of incarceration, and they had vowed to end their own lives if they were cornered by police or placed in a tight situation where escape was not possible.

Dubbed the “suburban Bonnie and Clyde” by reporters, the thrill-seeking Ericksons undoubtedly reveled in all of the publicity and media attention until the long arm of the law literally reached out and grabbed Jeffery by the collar, just before he could carry out his next bank job. FBI and suburban law enforcement had been tracking the couple’s movements for weeks. A task force had been formed, and they had kept Erickson’s Hanover Park apartment under twenty-four-hour surveillance.

Observing the arrest of her husband while seated behind the wheel of a battered Ford Econoline van, Jill Erickson whirled the vehicle around, deciding to make a run for it. She led the cops on a wild ten-mile car chase through the Northwest and Western suburbs, firing over her shoulder as she plowed through dense traffic with the Feds and as many as forty patrol cars in hot pursuit. The Chase ended at Bear Flag Drive, a residential subdivision in Hanover Park.

Her tire shot out, and struck by police gunfire, Jill realized the hopelessness of her situation. Surrender was not an option. She turned the weapon on herself. It was lights out for the “Yuppie Bonnie Parker.” She died at Humana Hospital that night.